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On the 4th, remembering freedom's roots

Alamogordo News

Posted:
07/03/2014 09:43:00 PM MDT

"We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

With that opening vision of universal truths, a new, independent nation was born. And, while we have yet to achieve that vision of a nation where all truly are created equal, it continues to serve as a guidepost.

This Fourth of July finds our nation's politics seemingly more divided than ever, with the Republican speaker of the House preparing to file a lawsuit against the Democratic president. It seems at times that our nation's leaders have never been more divided.

And yet our history tells us the holiday we celebrate today was also the product of great political strife and hardened factions.

Our colonies had been at war with England for more than a year by the summer of 1776, yet even the men who had been leading the resistance against England were divided on the idea of independence. John Dickinson, whose "Letters From a Pennsylvania Farmer" had earlier helped to unify opposition against the British, argued against the Declaration, fearing attack from France and Spain, and abstained on the final vote.

"I value the love of my country as I ought; but I value my country more. ... The declaration will not strengthen us by one man or by the least supply, while it may expose our soldiers to additional cruelties and outrages," he argued.

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The political battles didn't end with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The first few years of our nation saw fierce philosophical battles for control between Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans on one side and Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists on the other.

"I am not a Federalist, because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever. ... Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all," Jefferson wrote in 1789.

Hamilton, of course, met an untimely death when he was shot down by political rival Aaron Burr during a duel.

Yet, for all of the disagreement that surrounded the creation of the Declaration of Independence, and the long list of grievances that document contains, it ends with this call for unity: "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

It was from that mutual pledge that our nation was born.

As we struggle to find common ground these days on all the many issues that divide us politically, it is good to remember those origins and the many political battles that have come before ours.

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